The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Samuel Clemens, 14 June 1887
Date: June 14, 1887
Whitman Archive ID: ucb.00961
Source: Walt Whitman Collection, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 4:101. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Alex Ashland, Stefan Schöberlein, Kevin McMullen, and Stephanie Blalock
328 Mickle Street
Camden New Jersey1
June 14 '87
Dear S E C
I wish to send you my special deep-felt personal thanks for your kindness & generosity to me—
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
Samuel Clemens
(1835–1910), better know by his pen name, Mark Twain, attended
Whitman's New York lecture in April 1887. He also contributed to Thomas Donaldson's
fund for the purchase of a horse and buggy for Whitman (see Whitman's September 22, 1885 letter [note 4]), as well as to
the fund to build Whitman a private cottage (see Whitman's October 7, 1887 letter to Sylvester Baxter). Twain
was reported in the Boston Herald of May 24, 1887 to have
said: "What we want to do is to make the splendid old soul comfortable" (Clara
Barrus, Whitman and Burroughs: Comrades [1931],
268).
Notes:
1. This letter is addressed: Samuel E. Clemens | (Mark Twain) | Hartford | Conn:. It is postmarked: Camden, N.J. | Jun 14 | 10 AM | 87. [back]